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The artist, as an outsider, is ideally placed for picking up that which has been chucked out. Claire Brewster’s work is about retrieving the discarded, celebrating the unwanted and giving new life to the obsolete.
In between the glossy consumption of first-time retailed goods and those which are thrown out (to be incinerated or land-filled) is the netherworld of the second hand. Flea markets, carboots sales, and charity shops. Perhaps you can tell as much about a society by what it thows out as by what it puts in its museums as mementos of prior existence. It is the discarded and the second hand that provides Claire with much of her raw material and inspiration. In terms of her work environment, it is by surrounding herself with this that she creates her magical landscapes. This is not out of nostalgia but a genuine fascination with ‘things’, a desire to examine the overlooked. From this stating point, Brewster develops work that it greater than the sum of its parts.
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